Shouzer

The roads are horrible here right now.  Not because they’re icy or anything like that–no, it doesn’t get that cold here.  :)  Actually, it’s because there’s just too many damn cars out there.  It usually takes me about 5 minutes to get home from work, which I personally really like.  Yesterday it took me 20.  Now, granted, that’s not actually that long.  On the other hand, it is 4x longer than usual.

Anyway, I’m getting ready to leave for a couple weeks.  It’s cool that I haven’t been working at MS for even six months yet, and I can already take a couple weeks off.  That’s how we roll, I suppose.  I think next year, though, I’ll have to stick around.  My building was dead quiet the last few days, and it’s probably the best time of the year to get some serious work done if you want to.

I’ve got a considerable bit of student loan debt. In addition to the federal loans I took out, I also had to get a number of private student loans to pay for school. I never gave much thought to it, because it was generally just what I had to do. I simply wouldn’t have had enough money for school otherwise.

Now it’s come time to try consolidate, as seems to be the norm. You hear these things all the time about how you can save hundreds of dollars a month by consolidating. My experience so far is that it’s little more than a lie. Federal loans aren’t an issue, but even then I’m not saving hundreds–try tens.

As for private loans, that’s an entirely different story. So far, it seems like the best consolidation loan I would be able to get would give me a higher interest rate than any of my existing loans. How does that make sense? They tried to convince me it was based on credit, but that’s obviously a lie, because so were my initial loans. And in the case of two them, the interest rate they’re offering is actually 2.5% higher. Not only that, but it would be over the course of 5 more years than what I’d currently be paying.

In short, I should have started a fucking bank. Making an automatic 160% percent on every dollar I give out? That’s not a bad deal at all. Yeah, that’s right. I give you $10, you give me $26. Booyah.

So, yes, I’m still alive and I still visit Shouzer and try to stay current on everyone’s happenings. Unfortunately school hasn’t been allowing me the time to post much. Luckily though I can actually take a bit to fix that.

I just finished my midterms this past Friday. That was the first thing, being in the sixth week of a 10-week quarter this fast was a wake up call in terms of time management and study habits. Having spent my whole life in semesters, this was a huge adjustment. Second, working has been kicking my ass and not in the fun way of long days in a busy ER with multiple traumas. Don’t worry Harlow, no more gruesome stories from me anymore.

I traded in fun in the ER for fun running a simulation lab for medical students and residents in the anesthesia program at Rush. It isn’t what I wanted to do–I really did want to work in an ER up here–but I had to take what I could get. I have learned more about anesthesia though by working in their simulation lab, and it has presented me with some great networking opportunities so I suppose it isn’t all that bad, right?

A few weeks ago I had a run in with the vacuum cleaner in the dark hallway of my apartment. It resulted in a fracture and dislocation. Thankfully, Al came over the next day and reduced my toe. I would have done it myself, but hey, it hurt like a bitch to touch so there was no way I could make myself do it. Al did great, and I have the satisfaction of knowing I was his first live patient he treated all on his own. Great job, Dr. Abalos! It’s healing well, by the way.

In some exciting non school/work news, I did do something entertaining last night. Scott and I went to see Kathy Griffin live at The Chicago Theatre. Her stand up was awesome! I don’t know if any of you watch her show on Bravo Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, but I highly recommend it.

Kathy has been in the news a bit recently for her “controversial” Emmy acceptance speech. I think her speech is great and dead-on. Here’s a clip of it and her subsequent interview on Larry King, in which she goes on to explain the meaning of her speech…but that meaning apparently fell on deaf ears to some.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbziBwi489Q

As I said, her routine was excellent. I think anyone that can make a crowd laugh as much as she did last night for 1.5 hours straight through deserves major props. In my mind she isn’t on the D-List (and hasn’t been for some time, I might add). She has great sass and a rapid-fire wit and knows how to use it.

Hope everyone is doing well.  I’m outta here!

[Edit:] I’ve had a number of people point out that I accidentally wrote about PuzzzleCrack 2008 in this post as opposed to 2007. Feel free to mock my stupidity.

I’ve been rather silent lately, and I attribute that primarily to the fact that I’ve been legitimately busy for quite a while.  The one highlight from all this, though, was a successful running of PuzzleCrack 2008.

As you might recall, our team won last year, and so we took it over this year.  It ended up going very well, but it was extremely grueling.  Before the week started, I thought were were pretty much ready to go.  Boy, was I wrong.

We ended up staying up into the morning every day working on the next day’s puzzle.  I don’t know how much sleep we averaged, but it couldn’t have been much–I know we were all tired all day every day.  I still haven’t really “caught up” on my sleep yet, either, as I’ve been staying up late most of my nights back here working…

Since good ‘ol Albert posted some pics of his new place, I figured I should post some of mine. I can’t let some Philipino outdo me. And yes, Albert, that was racist. And yes, Albert, I misspelled Filipino on purpose.

Before we get started, I wanted to give you a disclaimer. This little mini-tour will be great–grand, even. However, it’s nothing compared to real life. That tour would be LEGEN…wait for it…and I hope you’re not lactose intolerant, because the second half of that word is DAIRY! LEGENDAY! Bee Tee Dub, if you’re not watching How I Met Your Mother yet, do it. It’s ridonk with hilarity. (No, I don’t really talk like that… How I Met Your Mother references abound).

So anyway, when you take your first step into the place, you’ll see part of my kitchen and my living room. Now, question. When is a futon mattress on the floor next to the end table with the laptop in front of the TV a good thing? Only always!

Over to the right is where I make my Macaroni And Cheese With Cut-up Hotdogs In It. It’s so good, it deserves capitals. That’s just how it rolls.

Through the door past that is bedroom number one. Since I have no furniture, it’s basically just a big floor where I throw all my clothes. Okay? Awesome.

It’s actually got two closets, which is great. The closet on the left is where I keep all my regular shirts and stuff. The closet on the right, behind the door, is where I keep all my nice clothes. Nice shirts, nice pants, awesome suit, ties, etc. All that’s important is it’s where I go when I need to suit up.

Through the door there is the master bathroom. Which, of course, implies that I have two bathrooms. Very nice.

Standing in the kitchen and facing what would left in respect to the first picture, we see a closet and a hallway. Nothing too fancy there. Just your standard closet and hallway, which is actually rather disappointing. If I’d built the place, there’d totally be trap doors or something right around this area. Totally.

Going into the hallway and turning left, we come to the other bathroom. It’ll definitely be nice having a pair of bathrooms once I actually move into the bedroom, I would think.

From that bathroom, we see the washer and dryer. They might look ordinary. And, in fact, the dryer actually is ordinary. This ordinary-ness (or even ordinarity, perhaps) is all the more upsetting when I consider the washing machine. It’s basically dead silent when it’s running. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it exists–not unlike the illustrious loch ness “creature”, Nessie. (We’re trying to get away from the term “monster”; Nessie is a gentle creature, very much unlike Sasquatch, which I think we should all be on alert for). Continuing on…

If we had turned right in the hallway, we’d be in the second bedroom. As you can see from the picture, this is going to be my office. I guess it’ll be my guest room, too. But mainly my office, hehe.

Finally, I decided to snap a closer pic of my desk. Since it’s the only real piece of furniture I have, I figured it deserved its own picture. The red computer on the left is named thewaiter, because it’s my file server. Get it? It serves up all my files. Genious? I thought so too. Kyle will know what I’m referring to, anyway. Next up, the Black Beauty in the center is jMoney. Mostly because it’s money. On the far right, we have an old HP that I bought from Kyle for $50. It’s my web server, svn server, hg server, and proxy server. Its name is WOPR… Anyone? Takers? Oh, and the bright blue router on the floor is home to jNet. It’s a badass D-Link DIR-655. That means gigabit lan and 802.11n wireless.

Well, that about wraps it up. I realized after I started writing this post that I didn’t take closer picture of the living room or the balcony. Maybe I’ll do that later, but probably not. I believe that’s my laziness kicking in. Oh, how I both love and hate my laziness.

I’d just been doing my thing for the last few weeks. You know, work, sleep, work, sleep, etc. But then all of a sudden, BAM! Megan, Corinne, and Jordy were all out here too. Sure, Jordy had been here all summer for an internship with Amazon, but ignore that fact. Facts are the devil’s favorite tools. “Who needs them?”, that’s what George Bush says.

Anyway, Megan came out here to visit, and Corinne had just finished her internship and was out to visit Jordy. Good times were sure to follow, and follow they did. We didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy, but it was still a blast. We saw Bourne and The Simpsons (both of which I really enjoyed), we ate out at a few nice places, we got drunk (read: I got drunk) and played some guitar hero one night. We generally just hung out. Oh, and Megan got her cook on. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in like 3 weeks, so I was all about that.

What’s funny about it, though, is that I’m not doing anything very different than I did all last week. Oh, I haven’t gone to any movies or eat out. I’ve just been sitting around watching tv (and three movies today, haha), but it’s more or less the same type of stuff. Regardless, it certainly is not the same. I imagine this could be considered pretty obvious, but I guess the point is that it’s nice having company, even if you’re all just sitting around together.

I’ve been in my permanent place for about a month now, and I still don’t really have any furniture. You walk in, and basically what you see is a TV, a mattress on the floor in front of the TV, a chair, and my laptop in front of the chair. That’s about all there to it. It makes for a pretty short tour.

The fact of the matter is that I haven’t been able to afford furniture yet. Rent, food, cable, internet, phone, gas, etc. It’s all just too expensive. I did manage to get a desk for my “office room” last week, but it’ll probably be a while before I get anything else. That’s in large part due to the fact that I plan on getting a nice TV at some point, but hey… You’ve gotta have your priorities straight. Who needs a bed frame when you’ve got a mattress and a 50″ TV? That’s the question I want an answer to.

So, I realized I haven’t posted on here in ages, and as such I felt it was time for an update. Don’t worry Hark, no ER stories anymore as I no longer work in an ER (at least for the time being). Like Al I’ve moved to Chicago (thanks for the apartment listings, btw) and am slowly settling into life here and in my new apartment. I also found out while walking to Starbucks this morning that I live just 1/2 block north and 1 block west from Al.

Scott and I are now living together–and settling in quite nicely, I might add. After having a long-distance relationship for the past two years, it’s weird to think that I’ll be seeing him everyday from now on. Guess I haven’t gotten used to the fact that short visits are no longer what’s in store for us.

The city is wonderful, and the neighborhood our apartment’s located in is great. It’s close to Rush, which is where I will be starting grad school in September. It is close to the expressways and the CTA, and to some really great restaurants and bars…all within walking distance. I definitely didn’t have it this good in St. Louis.

Now to just finish all this unpacking….

I’m really digging my new apartment. Sure, I don’t have furniture yet, so it consists of nothing more than a mattress on my living room floor. It’s got so much upside potential though (that one was for you, Hark). It’s a little Diaper Dandy, as Dick Vitale might say.

My one complaint so far has been the street that it faces. It’s actually a rather busy street, and it gets pretty loud during the day. It won’t be much of a problem once I get my surround sound and big TV. Obviously I’ll just drown that shit out. That’s how I roll. Even now, it’s not an issue at all if I close my windows. Since nobody in Washington (apartments and most houses alike) have air conditioning, though… Well, that hasn’t quite been an option.

I’ll have to post some pictures, but I might wait until I actually have something to show for the place.

I got a letter today from my grandparents, one from my grandma and one from my grandpa. According to my grandpa’s letter, it was the first time he has written anything since he retired in 1990. I had never thought about it before, but it was the first time I had ever seen his handwriting. It was kind of cool to be the recipient of a letter from someone who hasn’t seen a need to write in 17 years.

In other news, I’m watching the Seinfeld now where Kramer has the idea to start a pizza place where you can cook your own ‘pizza pie’. Jerry claims that there is no one in an walk of life, under any circumstances, would want to cook their own pizza. Well, I disagree. I would love to cook my own pizza right now. I don’t have a kitchen here in Thailand, and I miss cooking a lot. It used to be very relaxing for me, and I really enjoy creating delicious meals. If I found a restaurant in Thailand that let you cook your own food, I’d be all over that action. There are cooking courses, but I’m get so much Thai cuisine that it’s not really worth learning to cook it at this point. Maybe I’ll take one in the last month I’m here so I can bring the goodness home.

My final tidbit is the slightly interesting fact that it is 29 C (84 F) in my apartment right now, and I’m getting cold. I guess I’ve grown somewhat accustomed to the heat here. I’m going to turn the A/C off now.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Once work started, I haven’t had a ton of free time, and what time I have had has admittedly been spend on tv. This weekend, on the other hand, has been spent on Harry Potter, which I finished earlier today. I’ll get to that sometime later, though.

So yeah, I started work last week. The first two days, I was in orientation with about 150 other people who were also starting. They definitely had a lot to tell us, and hopefully I remembered most of the important things, haha. The next few days were spent setting up my computer, talking to my manager quite a bit, and things like that. I only got around to doing any real work toward the end of Friday, and even then the stuff I was doing was more or less insignificant.

This next week I’ll be spending in a class, actually, so I won’t be doing a whole lot then either, haha. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I get to that point, but it’s still somewhat frustrating. Such is life, I imagine.

I happened to catch Michael Moore on The Daily Show the other day.  It was ok, I guess.  I don’t really care for Michael Moore as an interviewee.  Mind you, I happen to thoroughly enjoy his movies.  Crazy fuckin’ communist or not (as Team America seems to make him out to be), I think he makes some good sense.  Bush == Bad.  Hurray, I agree!  I guess it doesn’t take much…

That being said, I don’t think he makes for a great interview.  He tries to be funny, and he’s really not.  That alone ruins it.  Despite this, his new movie SiCKO should be something most Americans can rally behind.  I find it hard to believe there’s a lot of people out there (particularly those in the middle class) who think the healthcare system in the US is as good as it should be.

So I have to admit I was surprised to hear from Moore that he was bumped from Larry King for Paris Hilton.  Paris fucking Hilton.  That’s just sad.  Probably more than healthcare, that’s the thing wrong with America.  She shouldn’t be news.  Ever.  EVER.  Apparently the interview brought in the highest ratings Larry King has ever gotten, so I guess I can’t blame him, though he’s basically feeding the monster.

Whatever.

I’m up here in the good ‘ol northwest, now. Blue skies are all I see, so I don’t want to hear anything about how much it rains. For the next seven days, there’s no forecast of rain. So take that, rest of the country!

I don’t know where I’ll be living permanently yet (hopefully I’ll get that taken care of relatively quickly), so for now I’m just living in temporary corporate housing. I’ve got to say that it’s pretty nice, but just in case you didn’t believe me (what’s the matter, you don’t trust me?), I’ve taken the liberty of posting some pics. So sit back and relax, as I walk you through my apartment.

Right after you walk through the door, this is what you’ll see:

A couple steps forward and a left turn earns you:

Across the way is the kitchen, which actually seems pretty nice:

Continuing on, we reach the living room, complete with fireplace. I could do without the fireplace and with the extra space, honestly.

Across from that is the dining room. Apparently I was having a seizure when I took this picture. I must be too much of a man to even notice it.

Finally, we see where all the magic happens. Or, that’s what Cribs tells me anyway.

One thing I really like about the apartment is the nice closets:

And one final shot from the opposite side of the bedroom, showing the second bathroom and closet doors.

I wrote this a little while ago, but apparently never posted it. I don’t remember why, but here it is:

I’ll be moving in about a week now, and it’s strange to think about it.  I’ve lived in the same general area for about twelve years now.  Even more than that, though, I’d been doing the same thing for about seventeen years.  School, summer, school, summer, school, summer.  Bleh.  Just thinking of it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

And yet, it was a cycle that, while I wasn’t particularly happy with it, was easy and familiar.  I mean, certainly there’s a taste worse than bitter, right?  I don’t know; I’m lazy–sometimes easy and familiar is all I want.  In fact, I won’t lie…  Most of the time easy and familiar is what I want.  You silly overachievers and your “adventures” and “new things”.  You think you’re better than me?  You wanna go?

Anyway, that’ll all be changing in about two weeks.  Before then, however, I’ve got to pack up and load all my shit on a truck.  It’s a pain in the ass.  Of course, by “I’ve got to” I mean “Microsoft has hired people to”…  It’s probably a distinction worth noting.  I won’t actually be doing any lifting or anything.  Oh, no no no.  Hahaha.  I laugh at the thought.  See?  Ha!  Laughter.

It was a long weekend, that is for sure. We began moving things to Carterville Friday evening, but the bulk of the work was done Saturday. There isn’t much to say about moving furniture, clothes, and things from one location to another, except that it makes one tired.

I put myself in charge of all Mediacom dealings, which was as much a curse as it was a blessing. So let me count the cable jacks for you in this house. (3) Living Room, (1) Formal Living Room, (1) Dining Room, (1) Master Bedroom, (1) Bedroom #2, (1) Bedroom #3. That makes 8. That’s entirely too many, but I figure, hey, if the guy who built the house thought that was necessary, so be it. The people we bought the house from (they were the second owners of the house) used a satellite dish and had no cable. But I never considered the possibility that the house was never equipped for cable, considering the 8 jacks throughout the house. That was the case, though. So when the Mediacom guy gets here, he has to run a new line from the closest box in the neighborhood (luckily, it was situated between our house and the neighbors in the backyard). So now I’ve got this bright orange eyesore running all the way across my lawn because Mediacom subcontracts a company to bury the cable, and I’m informed that might take 2-3 months. Go figure. Now, you would think that after connecting the orange eyesore main line to the line running into my house that the myriad of cable jacks would all be hot (ie. working). Again, that would be too easy. Three of them worked stupendously; five were nonresponsive. I’m going to leave out the next part of the story, because I don’t want to make this post into a novella, but if I did tell you this story, it would include two trips to the attic, 1 cable split into 4 cables, those 4 cables split into 8, a hole in the sheetrock, and a hidden compartment in my garage.

After about 3 hours, though, we did have working Mediacom cable TV and internet. The internet has been touchy, though. It seems (after talking with 2 different tech support guys) that the computer that processes change orders (when we changed addresses, they changed our account number) was failing to complete the order. So sometimes the internet was here just isn’t working because the modem doesn’t understand what account to work for. At least I think that’s the problem. Anyways, I think it is working for good now.

Also, since moving to Carterville would require a new phone number, I decided to check out Mediacom’s cable phone service. Turns out, that they are running a special on their VIP package. We only pay $0.01 on phone service per month through December, and then it’s $30. Plus, no installation fee. And that $30 is still cheaper than the $50 we payed for phone in Herrin with Verizon. Even better, the VIP package bumps internet speeds from max 8mbps to 15mbps. Very nice.

The only problem left right now is that I’m getting good speeds when I’m directly connected to my router (~6.5mbps), but on wireless it diminishes greatly, even though I’m connected at 54mpbs (and the router is in my room). Surely, I’ll figure it out soon, though.